I'm not so sure I agree. A non standard color was a lot different then a trim override. Ordering a Monza Red car with a blue interior was a trim override, and was pretty straightforward. If a dealer was willing to order it, the factory would usually build it. The paint and interior materials were already on site at the factory. Primer was on hand to, so building a car in primer was probably easy for an assembly plant.

When it got more difficult was when a car was ordered in a color from another GM brand, a color from a different model year, or a custom color. A non standard color required materials to be special ordered, and I'm pretty sure required a COPO. That's what COPO was created for, to build cars in special colors or with special equipment, for fleets, municipalities etc. In the late 60's a couple smart dealers used the COPO program to build performance cars, but it was originally intended for much more mundane purposes, like ordering a 4 door Biscayne police car with bucket seats, or the Shriners ordering purple 62 Corvettes.

It's been almost 30 years since I was a fleet manager, and the ordering process in the 60's and 70's was a little different and simpler, then it was when I was doing it in the late 70's, 80's and 90's. Emission equipment, safety equipment, options having to be ordered in packages instead of individually, and GM's computerized ordering all made it hard to deviate beyond a standard production vehicle. In the 80's, there was an override RPO for non recommended paint and trim combinations, but it had to be approved and chances were only 50/50 that it would be. If we needed trucks in a non standard paint color, I think it required a COPO. I was dealing with a dealer that specialized in fleet sales, so that kind of thing was handled by them, but I always thought it went through the COPO program, because that's what I always understood it was created for.

 

Interesting story, and I’d love to hear more St. Louis stories.

I’d heard about the primer story, but had never seen the trim tags like that before. I appreciate learning something new.

Paint quality might have varied depending on the shift, etc., and perhaps the Corvettes of that era had poor paint jobs compared to the Cadillacs.

My early build ‘69 has the factory paint from the fall of 1968. It is far from perfect, as it has chips, blemishes, etc. but I attribute that to wear and tear, etc. I presume the spidering, etc. is due to fiberglass underneath. You certainly can’t see it from a few feet back. I haven’t even waxed it yet. I’m not going for a show car look, and I’m very satisfied at how the paint has held up. I’m the same age as my car, and I have “patina” on my face that I didn’t have in my 20s…




After a wash



Factory original, painted in the fall of ‘68

 

Coronette, unless you think you need a cleaner wax for some reason you might want to try Griot's Speed Shine.
For at least the last 20 years it's been the only thing I've used on my 46+ year old lacquer.
If you go with a cleaner wax I'd be super careful. Any blue on the towel...stop!....

 

First off, I wish my '72's original paint weathered the years as well as your '69's.
Lacquer is a brittle paint compared to today's urethanes. When the Corvette body naturally flexes the lacquer doesn't, so spider webbing occurs. Crazing is also a result of the brittleness.

 

Not sure how they stacked up within the “Big 3” but I was exposed to several new Corvette paint jobs in the 60s and 70s that were hideous and often returned to the dealership.

They even gave up trying to get black right after ‘69 for quite awhile. Didnt get any better when they returned, I had to take back a black ‘77 and my buddy brought back his ‘78 PC.

Those rivet bumps bleeding through the front ends on the early C3s were a nice look, too.

 

Back in 1978 I ordered a new Z28 Camaro from the factory.
when I took delivery the paint looked like they forgot to buff it out.
I refused delivery until they fixed the paint.

Even as late as 1989 when I Purchased a new black Chevrolet 1 ton dually.
Within a couple of months the paint started peeling off the hood, top of the cab and top of the fenders.
Chevy repainted the entire truck for me free of charge.
They even painted the bed and the camper shell to match the new paint.

 

I agree they were the worst paint jobs . My uncle bought a brand new 70 and I can remember looking at it when he took it home and asking him what was wrong with the paint

 

Wow I bet that went over like a stink bomb.

 

Griot’s is one of the products I use. I was going to try the overnight treatment with a bottle of Meguiar’s wax as well.

No doubt individual cars have had problems (I bought a new car decades ago that, within a few months, had rust-colored dots come through the white paint over the entire car), but growing up in a Chrysler family in the 1970s and 1980s (and drooling over every Corvette I spotted), my impression was that the Mopar paint on the various cars we had was definitely lacking. Even in sunny Southern California, the cars that I see that seem to have the worst paint are the Jeep Cherokees from the early 1990s.

Back in the day, GM seemed to be pretty serious about the hierarchy of its different divisions (definitely pre-Cimarron), so it wouldn’t surprise me if the “better” GM factory paint went on the Cadillacs. By the time the C3 debuted, however, the Corvette was already such a special car in the GM stable. So, I’d be curious to see if paint problems were due to interactions with fiberglass bodies, inconsistent products from various vendors, late night weekend assembly line shifts, etc.

I have to say that there are a large number of absolutely amazing Corvettes with original factory paint owned by members here.

 

Face it even former line workers do get things wrong about why some things happened. Just for the record Bowling Green was not a brand new facility. It was a 550,000 square foot factory used by Chrysler's Air Temp division to produce air conditioners . It required extensive reconstruction to be ready to produce Corvettes . GM's manufacturing arm took it over and expanded it into a one million square foot , air condioned facility with a three story paint shop. This all comes from " Corvette From The Inside " . By Dave McLellan , Corvette Chief Engineer from 1975 - 1992 . All the sides were removed and a lot went into making it what it is today . I think it was added onto again when they started making the XLR .

 

true story 😂 but he knew it and returned to dealer several times… that is why they never painted black because they could never get the body straight enough.

 

I would think they would be very rare !!